It's a Knockout

On Saturday 2nd of July this year we are going to be hosting a huge event that you will all want to be part of! Between 11 and 4 there will be competitions, food & drink, stalls, a treasure hunt, bouncy castle and so much more for people to take part in as well as the main event of an It's a Knockout competition between teams from Hartlepool and Washington. We are currently selling tickets through school and the local parishes for this event at just £1 so hurry up and get yours before you miss out!

Year 6 Retreat

St. Cuthbert's and St. Teresa's Primary Schools joined up for a Leaver's Retreat at the Youth Village in May. This was the first time that the schools had come together for something like this but hopefully not the last.

Taking the theme of "You are God's Treasure" the children were helped to learn about how God has been looking after them during their time at primary school and how he will continue to do this as they move up to English Martyrs Secondary School.

This was done with great YMT style, making the experience hugely enjoyable for the nearly 90 children who went. Many thanks to the school staff for making this possible and especially to Miss Cahir and Miss Frain for being willing to try something a little bit different.

Year 9 Retreat - Over & Under

One of the games that the Year 9s enjoyed when they were on retreat last year was the Over & Under race so it was only right that we would play the same thing again this year. Those who were on the Year 8 retreat with St Anne Line house last year will remember that Miss Malcolmsons team beat Mr Websters team at this game. Let's have a look at what happened in the rematch:

Year 9 Retreat - Celebration Mass

On our final day at the Youth Village we celebrated mass together as the work of our few days on retreat all came together. We had been looking at the theme of choices during the time on retreat and the gospel for our mass was on the parable of the talents and the choices that the people who each had different amounts of money had to make. One group presented this to the others by acting out an Apprentice style role play with Aidan playing a brilliant Sir Alan Sugar!

Another group had been practicing a dance to 'Amazing Grace' by thebandwithnoname and this was a brilliant way for us to finish our celebration together. Well done to everyone who got involved and here is the video of the girls in action:

Year 9 Retreat - Role Play

As part of the Year 9 retreat at the Youth Village with YMT each group had to do a short role play focusing on a key word. The first group acted out some of the wonderful things that Mother Teresa did during her amazing life, naming her as an inspiration to each of us:

The second group took on the theme of happiness and decided to make up a song (Not copying the 'Go Compare' advert... honest!) called 'Go Be Happy':

The third and final group had the theme of forgiveness and decided to act out a scene from Friends with Annabelle being just a bit too good at playing the role of Janice!

Many thanks to YMT for providing the footage for this clip after Miss Malcolmson forgot to hit record...

Year 9 Retreat - Dance Off

On Friday morning Howard led a dance off between each of the groups. The first stage meant that each group got to perform their own two dances while everyone else watched then joined in for the Black Eyed Peas song Bebot:

After this everyone took part in the final mash-up with some interesting results!

Year 9 Retreat - Video Roundup

We've finally put together a short video of the highlights of our Year 9 Retreat at the Youth Village. It was difficult cutting this one down to just 3 minutes because there was so much that could have been put into here but look out for a few other feature videos still to come!

Year 9 Retreat - Review

Hey its Shannon, Chelsie and Haleigh here! Over the past 3 days we have been to the the Youth Village on retreat. When we were there we had an awesome time!

First to greet us was Howard or as he likes to call himself, Howay Howey. Although Shannon still believes they are different people. He is from the Philippines and is brilliantly funny (and an amazing dancer).

Next was Father Paul who is from Cameroon in Africa and paying for 120 ophans to have 2 years of schooling. He is the nicest priest in the world and we got a huge hug from both him and Howard at the end of retreat.

It was an amazing experience that we would definitely recommend for everyone!

Shannon, Chelsie & Haleigh xxx

Year 9 Retreat - Day 3 Update

Today we continued our workshops and mine was drama! And once we had practiced, we wrote bidding prayers to say during our mass celebration. We learned a few songs to sing in it too.

We woke up late and forgot to make Mr. Webster his daily cuppa! Don’t know how that went down with him. We took a lot of photos as it was the last day and we had a little bit of time to ourselves, which was nice. We cleaned out our rooms and the cleaners came and mopped / hovered our floors. Quite a few of us played football during free time and it was really fun!

In the mass, I think the drama was okay with Lord Alan Sugar and in the art workshops they created a big mural for it whilst the dancers were practicing for their performance. Their performance was the best I think, with all the practice they put in to it but overall, we had unbelievable amounts of fun!

Aidan Allinson :)

Year 9 Retreat - Day 2 Review

Today for dinner we had ham and cheese wraps, salad and then finished with shortbread biscuits. They were delicious! After that we split into our groups and we discussed lots of topics such as: our image of god, inspirational people and lots more. Then we had to make up an advert to advertise a quality in a person, we chose love! Afterwards, we had to gather back together in our large group and perform our ideas.

After this we got a bit of our free time where we played a game of rounders in the field. Our team won! Miss Malcolmson had little faith in us and bet our team a chocolate bar each that we couldn’t get somebody on the opposing team out on second base. Surprisingly, we proved her wrong and it ended in us all receiving a Freddo bar off her!

Tea time came and we were given sausage, mash and beans; to be honest we didn’t find it very nice but some of the others did. Then, we had chocolate cake, it was “heaven” as Anne-Marie said! After tea we played the evolution game and we all really enjoyed this but we got a little bit carried away and now we all have very sore throats!

We then all reassembled in the auditorium and listened to a story off Phillip about Bud Welch and what happened at Waco, Texas. Later, we had a reflection session and everyone apart from about 4 people cried! Afterwards we had karaoke and it was so funny! We then went back to our room for the night.

At about 12 Phillipa, Eden and Lucy told Miss Malcolmson they were going for a drink, instead they snook into our bedroom. Half an hour later, Miss Malcolmson came in looking for them. Meanwhille, they were hiding in the toilet with Shannon. It was so funny!

Were going now, hopefully tomorrow is as good as today as been!

Jasmine Hewitt & Shannon O’Dwyer :)

Year 9 Retreat - Day 2 Update

Hey it's Annabelle and Marley!

Today we have had a dance off between ours groups and it was brill. We danced to Thriller, Dancing Queen, Don't Blame it on the Sunshine, Kung Foo-Fighting, The Twist and Ice Ice Baby.

Then we discussed who influences us and how we picture God. Then we decided wether we wanted to do art, acting or dancing and we picked art. Marley and I have been making prayer cards and so far so good. We've been doing human pyramids in our rooms and dancing to ABBA it was class!

We have been having a great time and have learnt a lot. We still have another night and we are hoping to learn how we and others look at God.

Bye bye for now :)

Annabelle and Marley xxxx

Year 9 Retreat - LIVE!

Here is the first update live from the Year 9 retreat! We arrived not long after lunch and have been busy with activities ever since. Our first day here has gone really well and we've got a quick update from two of the girls so here goes...

The first thing we did when we arrived at Consett Youth Village was play the spots and squares game. This involved everyone doing silly things to make us embarrassed! It was funny watching everyone else however that wasn't the case when it was your turn to dance :P

Next we played the Ho'way Howie quiz. This was where we split into three groups and answered a series of questions to compete for materials to build our egg protecting tower(which we are building tomorrow).

After this we had a rather hilarious and painful game of dodgeball. This goes without saying the girls obviously beat the boys... not just once TWICE! After this we had our dinner, for mains we had a choice of jacket potato or pasta bolognase then for desert we had an arctic role. In our opinion it was very nice!

After our meal we gathered back into our groups and discussed what we thought would be the perfect person, then expressed our thought and ideas with the rest of the peers. By this time it was time for a break and we had a extremely competitive game of over and under and yet again our team won... wahoo :-)

Finally we went back into the main hall and reflected on our day. We finished by having a short but powerful prayer which Phillip read to us. Many of the girls found it very moving as did me and Emily. Can't wait till tomorrow, hope its going to be as good as today!

Eden Huntley and Emily Petitte :-)

That's all for tonight everyone, we will blog more as the day goes on tomorrow though so keep checking back! Also, don't forget that we are on twitter so for more news follow @hpool_ministry now!

Making Cranes

Yoko is a Japanese woman who works in the UK but whose family are back in Japan. In an effort to help her people she has set about making 1000 paper cranes, a symbolic gesture but also a way of raising money. Last week she visited English Martyrs school and was joined by a big group of students, plus a few parishioners, to help her make them.

Amazingly we all managed to make something that, at least vaguely, resembled a crane and had a lot of fun in the process. We also had a collection that raised £34.93 and you can read more about Yoko’s effort by visiting www.1000cranes.org.uk so check it out now!

Musical Worship @ St Patrick's

A small group of young people and adults met-up at St. Patrick's to bring a fresh new sound to evening Mass. Led by the fearless Kev, we had 90 minutes to learn 5 new songs before leading an unsuspecting congregation to a musical place some of them had never been before!

The reaction was very positive. One parishioner said, "If people go away from here today not believing in the power of God, then they haven't been paying attention!" Thanks to the people of St. Patrick's for being so welcoming and to Kev and everyone else who made it happen, not least for the gorgeous food afterwards!

Feast of the English Martyrs

On the 4th of May we celebrated our patronal feast day of the English Martyrs in school. To mark this occasion we had a time of prayer and song and raised the school flag to honour those that make our faith possible today here in Hartlepool.